James Carville on Welfare & Poverty

$1.50 on job training better than $1 on a handout

The system I'd like to see is one that recognizes that spending a dollar and a half on getting someone into the workforce is far superior to spending a dollar on a handout. You see, if we actually cared about reforming welfare, we'd have to make work
pay, and that adds up:

We'd have to help more people with child care.

We'd have to increase the minimum wage.
If it doesn't rise this year, the purchasing power of the minimum wage will sink to the lowest it's been since 1955.

We'd have to keep the tax burden low on folks working their way out of poverty. We have a good program to do that. It's called the
earned income tax credit. It's been around since the Ford administration, and Ronald Reagan, of all people, called it "the best antipoverty, the best job-creation measure to come out of Congress." Now Republicans in Congress want to slash it.